“Snowballs at Noon"
Doing chores in the winter
sometimes causes even the hardiest
to contemplate Arizona, la playa,
or any point south and 70+ degrees.
Each morning, we bundle up tight:
snowmobile suits, one piece head gear,
yellow fuzzy gloves, and green packs,
and trudge to the barn where
the frayed corn stalks sag
against the pole fence.
Black baling twine bind them, sloppily
together like the neck of a burlap bag
full of six-week-old pigs.
With a long steel crow bar, I chip ice
from the watering trough
on cold mornings, pour cupfuls
of water into the ragged hole
and let the newly bred sows slurp
and slurp until they are full.
Old Tip, our collie, shoves his nose
between the slats, sniffs,
checking for who knows what.
He barks, and the oldest sow grunts,
knowing full well Tip’s temerity.
Beyond the sow’s pen in the open pasture,
now white from the night’s storm,
my old bay, silently munches breakfast.
For a moment, she hesitates, listens,
a clump of first crop baled hay dangles
from her lips like a spider
on a loose thread.
Her ears twitch as she stomps
and nervously looks around,
knowing something is about to happen
that might put her into a tizzy!
I turn just in time to catch
my brother’s snowball, loosely
packed, thrown from about twenty feet
away, right in my face, smothering
my black plastic framed glasses.
Then all becomes a whitish blur
like a snowstorm at midday.
Doing chores in the winter
sometimes causes even the hardiest
to contemplate Arizona, la playa,
or any point south and 70+ degrees.
Each morning, we bundle up tight:
snowmobile suits, one piece head gear,
yellow fuzzy gloves, and green packs,
and trudge to the barn where
the frayed corn stalks sag
against the pole fence.
Black baling twine bind them, sloppily
together like the neck of a burlap bag
full of six-week-old pigs.
With a long steel crow bar, I chip ice
from the watering trough
on cold mornings, pour cupfuls
of water into the ragged hole
and let the newly bred sows slurp
and slurp until they are full.
Old Tip, our collie, shoves his nose
between the slats, sniffs,
checking for who knows what.
He barks, and the oldest sow grunts,
knowing full well Tip’s temerity.
Beyond the sow’s pen in the open pasture,
now white from the night’s storm,
my old bay, silently munches breakfast.
For a moment, she hesitates, listens,
a clump of first crop baled hay dangles
from her lips like a spider
on a loose thread.
Her ears twitch as she stomps
and nervously looks around,
knowing something is about to happen
that might put her into a tizzy!
I turn just in time to catch
my brother’s snowball, loosely
packed, thrown from about twenty feet
away, right in my face, smothering
my black plastic framed glasses.
Then all becomes a whitish blur
like a snowstorm at midday.
No comments:
Post a Comment